Life Note
by Jecca Scarr
Summary: Everything is peaceful in death until L is yanked away from serenity and back into the world of the living. Someone known as The Magician keeps making children disappear and now that L is back he won't stop until the case is solved. ON HOLD.


Disclaimer : All Death Note persons, places, and things are copyright of their original owners, the magnificent Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. I don't own a thing.

Summary : In death everything is peaceful until L is yanked away from the wonderful feeling of serenity and back into the world of the living. And he's back because of a new power known as the Life Note. In his absence, the world hasn't changed much. There are plenty of new cases to be solved, including one unsolved case that has stayed unsolved since it's conception four years ago. Someone, that the media has brandished The Magician, is continuously making children vanish. They disappear without even the smallest of clues. For a detective that hasn't been able to stretch his deductive muscles in some time, this is the perfect case to tackle. But once someone has died, death does not completely let go of them. L must not only play a game of cat and mouse with The Magician, but he's also fighting to keep a strange darkness from engulfing him. New characters come along for the ride, with many twists and turns along the way.

And now, without further gilding the lily…

**Life Note**

**Chapter 1 - Of Boxes and Beginnings**

"Eve!"

Eve sighed as she heard her name being called. She grumbled under her breathe. She was nearly finished with her exhibit and this was only going to delay its completion even longer.

"Yeah?" she called out, still focusing on her work.

"They found something!" The excited voice said again. "A hidden study! You have to come and see! It's so amazing!"

"A hidden study…" she mused to herself. "Oh my God…"

"Well, come on!" A quick yank and Eve was right behind her beautiful cousin Cordia. They had done the math before and they were third cousins. It was kind of cool to say that you had a third cousin. Of course, it was only cool if you were a huge nerd. But Eve didn't care, she liked that she was actually cultured enough to enjoy knowledge, history, and family trees. In that order, usually.

Yanking back her arm from Cordia's grasp, Eve saw that her cousins hair was ridiculously beautiful today. She never had a bad hair day but today it was as if her hair had wanted to outshine even the brightest star in the heavens. The golden curls bounced with each of Cordia's graceful steps and Eve felt her cheeks redden. Comparing her thin, dull black hair to Cordia's mane of blonde curls always wrecked her self esteem. Normally Eve was fine with her plain appearance, but when she was around Cordia it really couldn't be helped. And she was usually around Cordia. They had practically grown up together, Eve being only two days older than Cordia, so both were at the ripe old age of 22. They were both the same height, not too tall and not too short.

"I am so excited," Cordia squealed. "I bet they've come across some old Wammy files and papers."

Eve nodded. She could barely contain her excitement, her dark eyes dazzling at the very thought of actually finding names of some of the more prominent and greatest minds that had come from the Wammy House.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, they made it to their destination. When Eve walked into the room, there was a huge brown box filled with papers thrust in her direction.

"Go through that," a husky voice ordered. Eve looked up to see the Executive Director. Paul DeGuardo. Of course, she wouldn't and couldn't refuse him. He was her boss. She was lucky to even have this job as part of the curatorial staff at The Wammy Museum of Knowledge, especially considering that she didn't have her degree yet. Apparently he had seen something that he liked enough to hire both her and Cordia. Though Eve did wonder if maybe they had got in on Cordia's beauty. Not that she was complaining. "Maybe you can make another exhibit with some of those papers."

"Yes, sir," she nodded, ready to attack the task at hand, and all thoughts on prior exhibits and displays completely gone from her head. She looked around and noticed a few others had all found places around the room with their own brown box. Finding a quiet place towards the back of the room, she finally began to dig in…

Hours passed and nobody had found anything of interest. Most of the other curators had already left, most of them had families to go home to. Children to take care of, especially in the days of The Magician, you never knew if one day your own child were to become a part of The Vanishings. Eve shuddered at the thought, she didn't know much about the case, besides what was in the newspapers. They never found the bodies of the missing children, which she took as a good sign that they were all still hopefully alive, but you never know. The Magician would leave bizarre and threatening notes from time to time, some which stated that he did kill the children and at other times he stated that he would never harm the children that he had taken under his wing. Eve shook the thoughts out of her head as she checked her watch. It was nearly midnight. Across the room, Cordia huffed wearily and stood up in defeat.

"You would have thought that there would have been something." She pulled at her hair, the stress from sitting in one position for hours taking its toll.

Eve felt the muscles in neck and shoulders ache as she finally sat up straight. She stretched out a little, a yawn escaping her lips. "Don't worry," she said, the yawn hindering her speech. "There's still tomorrow… wait…" A quick check at her watch confirmed her suspicion. One minute past midnight. "I mean, today."

"Thank you very much ladies," Paul said, his voice cracking from exhaustion. "Something tells me that we'll find something soon. We all need to go home and take a much needed break. We'll be refreshed when we come back in a few hours."

As much as Eve loved her work, she knew when to take a break. But Paul and his workaholic self did not. And a few hours to him really was a few hours. She was quite sure he was about to say that he would expect them both to be back here in this room in four or five hours. That wasn't nearly enough time to refresh one's self. In fact, it was probably more beneficial to take a power nap and get right back to it.

"How does 6 AM sound?"

Eve barely contained her laugh. She'd only been working for Paul for a few weeks now and she already had him pegged. She looked up at Cordia, waiting to see her reaction.

"Okay, well I guess we better get going so we can get all the sleep we can." Cordia stretched by standing up on her tiptoes and trying to touch the ceiling. "Come on, Evie… let's get going."

Cordia knew how much Eve hated being called Evie, but she was entirely too sleepy to make much of a fuss about it.

X X X

For the next three days it seemed that nothing could be found in the brown boxes. There were hundreds of them, all stacked tightly in the hidden study. Once they had been able to remove a good many of the boxes, they had all hoped that there would be something on the walls, but the only thing in the study other than the seemingly endless amount of boxes were the plain desk and accompanying chair.

The constant reading from three days had given Eve a migraine. And the dusty build up on the boxes wasn't helping the matter either. If she wasn't sneezing, she was popping pain pills to help keep her tired eyes and mind moving. She was on her third or fourth box of the day, counting had never been her forte, and was nearly ready to start on her fourth or fifth box. After filling out the necessary paperwork for box three or four, she grabbed another box from the stack. It was incredibly light compared to all of the other boxes she had done in the past couple of days.

As soon as she opened the box, everything was different. Instead of files and stashed papers, this box contained only one piece of paper. With 26 names scribbled on it in barely legible writing. And each name corresponded to a letter of the alphabet.

_What in the hell?_ she asked herself. _What is this? It looks like a child wrote this._

She rolled her eyes at this useless find. She quickly filled out the paperwork for box four or five, there wasn't much to it, and was nearly ready to grab box five or six when Paul's voice interrupted the silence.

"I guess we'll all come back tomorrow, make sure to mark your place." He seemed almost defeated, as if they were never going to find anything of interest.

Eve felt the same way. Three days and nothing. It was disheartening, especially after finding a secret study. Even if it had just been used for storage, she had been sure that they were going to find something incredibly interesting and telling about the Wammy House. All that history and all of the stories of brilliant minds coming from this one school were legendary. Speaking of legends, there were even tall tales that children that had been taught here went on to solve some of yesteryear's toughest crimes. If that was true then this had been the breeding ground of great detectives throughout the years. While that belief was not popular in the scientific and historical community, it was still an interesting thought.

On the way home, Cordia hadn't said anything and Eve didn't press her to say anything. They were used to having comfortable silence in the car. It gave them both an opportunity to clear their minds of work.

"Eve?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you think we'll ever find anything? I'm getting sick and tired of these stupid headaches. And there are still so many boxes to go through."

"I hope we do, I'm just as sick of it as you are… oh, hey… I totally forgot. Ozzie wanted me to ask you if you wanted to come with us to London for the weekend."

Cordia laughed, her laugh made you believe that her voice could actually dance, it was so melodic and beautiful. "No, no. I think I've been there with you guys for your past two trips. You two deserve some time alone. I'd feel like the third wheel."

"Oh God," Eve blurted. "You? Third wheel? How many times do I have to tell you that that has never been the case? Never. Ozzie thinks of you as one of his best friends, Cor."

"I dunno, I still feel that way."

"Don't. Please."

"Back when I was with Chris, didn't you ever feel like the third wheel?"

Eve laughed, her laugh not nearly as clear as the beautiful Cordia's. "Yeah, but that was because you two were so busy sucking each other's faces off that I could barely get a word in. That's why I only ever hung out with you both like two or three times."

"Oh." Cordia blanched. "Sorry. You could have told me."

"No," she shook her head. "You didn't listen to anything I said about Chris. He was perfect to you. In fact, there was one time when I said that you two needed a little break from each other and you nearly ripped my head off. Like, I think you honestly sprouted claws and devil horns. I am so not kidding."

Cordia and Eve both laughed together, the strains from work finally gone. In what seemed like only minutes, they were at their flat and already in their pajamas, practically ready for bed. Cordia was the first to fall victim to the power of sleep. She muttered goodnight and slumped gracefully to her room.

_How does she do that?_ Eve wondered as she watched her cousin until she could no longer see her. _Even when she's ready to pass out she looks great._

Life just wasn't fair. It really wasn't.

But as many times during the day that Eve wished that she was even half as pretty as Cordia, she knew that she would never ever trade it for the gift that she had. The moment that Eve had turned 19, her great grandmother had given her a beautiful white notebook. All she had said was that the directions were inside and that Eve should take care and read them and ponder them for many years until she ever once used the notebook. At first Eve had thought that her grandmother was just playing some sort of prank or was borderline insane. It wasn't until her grandmother left Eve her diary in her will that she actually believed that the notebook worked.

The diary went very far back, to the creator of the Life Note. There was a family tree in the front of the notebook, following each owner of the Life Note's journeys with the notebook. Some rarely used it while others changed the world with it. Her ancestors had made the world a better place.

And now Eve was the sole owner of the Life Note. And having the power to bring someone back from the dead was something that she cherished. Even if she was plain, it would be her to bring good to the world. Not Cordia.

As awful as she felt for thinking this way, it was the one thing that Eve had that Cordia did not. Cordia had kindness and good looks and Eve had been given knowledge and power. All in all, it was fair. No matter how many times she said it was not.

Peeking into Cordia's room to make sure that her cousin was asleep, Eve made her way to her own room. She always kept the Life Note hidden, under the furthest floorboard in the farthest reaches of her closet. That was where the Life Note had stayed for the majority of the past three years. Every now and then she would read the rules again, to stay familiar with them. But she still had not used it. Not one single name had been written since she had come into contact with the Life Note. Mostly because of the two warnings that were scrawled on the first page:

_**Warning**. The writer should take care in the names they choose to write. Most of the deceased  
should not be brought back to the world of the living. Death, whether remembered or not, affects  
every soul in different ways. The writer would do well to remember this so as to keep things of  
unnatural nature from infesting the world of the living._

_  
__**Warning**. The writer should never tell any soul, living or deceased, of the Life Note's existence._

The second warning should have been a given to anyone with a brain and a conscious. But the first warning was frightening. Unnatural nature. The first thing that always came to Eve's mind was something like zombies. The living dead. The only power Eve had was to make things come to life. She couldn't take it back once it had been written. There was no way that she could send people back into death, besides killing them herself. And there was no way she would ever be able to do that.

So instead, she believed that for a long while she would be just the guardian of the Life Note. It's safe-keeper.

X X X

L Lawliet had never been more at peace. There was no doubt in his mind that he was in a place of serenity. Who would have thought that death would be so wonderful. There was no concept of time, of places, of things, of people. Just peace.

Absolute in every sense.

The only thing other than peace was the brilliant light. The light would change as souls passed, but not color-wise, for change here was something inherently more infinite in scope. It was something that not even L could understand. And for once, not knowing did not bother him. Grasping concepts did not interest him here; where everything was nothing and nothing was everything. Serenity in light.

How fitting that he had been sent to the light by Light.

Light. Kira.

That Light he understood. And if peace had not been so resonant in every thought, then L knew that he would remember the last thing he saw before he died. Light's triumphant smile. But L was not troubled by human memories. Even before he had taken his last breath he had forgiven Light. There was no need to hold on to silly human feelings in death.

In peace.

And that's when the light changed…

**Chapter 2 Entitled:  
****Welcome**

_L comes back to the world of the living._

Author's Notes : The rating is from T to M. The only reason why I would even consider M is because of the case within the story and how it becomes a very scary, creepy, and diabolical concept later on. For right now I'll keep it T but it can change at any moment, so just be aware of that. So the rating is mostly for violence and adult concepts from the world of detective-ing.

Also, if you read, please review. I'd love to know what you think.


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